What do Quakers Say? / Que disent les Quakers?

What do Quakers say about Quebec and Canada?

Traditionally, Quakers have taken positions on the "grand issues" of society: slavery, prisons, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, war, and peace.

Quakers often refrain from taking partisan positions on specific local issues, especially ones which have many polarized political positions. On the issue of Canada and Quebec, the national association of Quakers, Canadian Yearly Meeting, has not adopted a minute. One local meeting, Hamilton Monthly Meeting, brought the issue to the floor of a recent session of Yearly Meeting. However, there was not unity on the issue (Quaker decision making is by "sense of the meeting", a spiritually-based process in which Friends come to agreement).

This does not mean that individual Quakers, or even Monthly Meetings, have no specific opinions on the question of Canada and Quebec. Simply read the "Impressions of Quebec" section and you will see that this is not the case. However, you may notice an openness, a receptiveness, a hesitancy to close one's mind, which is a hallmark of Quaker approaches to complex problems in which there may be no absolute right and wrong.